Showgirls and Dolls

Showgirls and Dolls: the Dance of Experience and Innocence

Stories like this are what send devout Christians to their knees. I’ve seen them crouch as though hiding nakedness and fling their hands into prayer: “Dear God, save the souls of those who harken to these corrupt halls and who bathe in applause and who indulge in the unorthodox glamour of the stage! For these are the people who spend their lives in shoes that sing and in rooms that exhale giant powder puffs and sequined gowns, leather boots, peasant garb. God, if you hear me, save my daughter from the disease of the theater that creeps stealthy through blue blood and wreaths your hair in diamonds.”
When they press their ears to the ground they hear, not the voice of God, but the clack of tap shoes and the thumb of an orchestra pit in a frantic tango. The small yellow house alongside the apple orchard, the sweetness of grass, the girlish curve of tulips in the garden has given way to a narrow apartment with itchy suade armchairs like the homeless man’s unshaven face that the parents notice as they sulk in their taxi.